Path -- a verb, to Path

"The 19th Century philosopher Franz Rosenzweig taught that life is a succession of leaps into pathlessness. We take a path, follow it, and then we must leap again. There is never a final decision, a choice to end all choices....There are many ways to path: cut, follow, climb, run, skip, stroll, circumvent. As long as the path we're on takes us where we want to go, we barely notice it."

On Friday I hope to get a peek into the future. Should I be thinking YES I'll have a job, or NO, not this year? So, while I wait, my stomach does flip flops and signals me before my brain ever does that I'm nervous about what next year will feel like.

As I read YEARNINGS, by Irwin Kula, I found the passage above. If I'm lucky I can persuade, first my mind and then my belly, that I am pathing and that regardless of what the year actually feels like, I'll be making discoveries, recording moments of finding new truth. Whatever decision I make, whatever opportunities I take advantage of, they are just part of a temporary path.

We all long for a final choice... "Once I make this decision, I'll be able to relax from here on out." First of all that will NEVER happen, and second of all if it DID happen, we'd either be bored or dead. So, maybe my subconscious is trying to slow me down by running through a cycle of what-ifs and watch-outs. If so, it's the part of my subconscious that fears and loves the status quo, it is not the subconscious that seeks to live dreams.

So, today I cry out, "Shut up, Fear! You are not welcome here."

Comments

Don't Read This if You Don't Like the Word Pee

Okay... so I think I nearly broke the toilet from plopping down on it so hard to go pee. WHY did I plop instead of coming in for my usual graceful landing? Because my best friend encouraged me to go to the gym and take her weight lifting class... and because I did it... and because she's so darn encouraging that I tried to show off how MOST people who don't go to the gym for four months would really stink their first time back... but not me! I decided that I should prove that I am a superhero who can skip the gym for four months and come in looking fresh and fit and strong as an ox... okay, okay... an ox that can lift a 2kg dumbell. I decided that these sleeping muscles could SURELY do just as many squats as that cute 60 year old woman in the front row whose gluteus maximus muscles look nice and bouncy. I'm just going to have to be deliberate about which chairs I go to sit in today. Spindly antique ones are definitely NOT my best option. ...

Undivided Self

Palmer describes two teachers, one who found joy and success in his career, and another who did not. He attributed the joyful teacher's success to the idea that he taught "from an undivided self." He says, "In the undivided self, every major thread of one's life experience is honored, creating a weave of such coherence and strength that it can hold students and subject as well as self." The other teacher, on the other hand, projected his inner warfare onto his students. The joyful teacher enjoyed craft, while the sour teacher enjoyed nothing. The joyful teacher was "enlarged" by his teaching. The sour teacher was diminished. As teachers we are either the joyful teacher OR the sour teacher. We have days, maybe even weeks, of being the joyful teacher and days of being the sour one. In my personal experience, when I am actually in the room teaching students I am the joyful one 95% of the time. When I leave the room and enter the rest of...

Altered Books and Journaling

We English teachers usually believe that the WORD, the combination of letters into meaning, is the most important tool in the box. In an effort to document my belief that it may be time to consider that there are other tools that help students make meaning out of their lives, out of what they read, out of what they think... I offer this slide show. Perhaps the literacy toolbox could be expanded. I say this knowing that some kids, like my oldest son, might balk... but also knowing that other kids, like my youngest son, would sing arias of found comfort and joy. Maybe next to the words and sentences, some kids could find color and shape and sticky-stuff... maybe cuttings and doodles and sketches... This slide show exhibits a visual reading journal using a traditional text entry and a webbed entry. It also shows some altered books.

The Days of Day

Search This Blog